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Early humans died in Pompeii-like eruption

By Jeff Hecht

Nearly all human fossils older than 100,000 years have been found in isolation. Not so the remains of five early humans from around 1.8 million years ago, unearthed from an area of just 300 square metres in Dmanisi, Georgia. The question is&colon; why were they found together?

According to anthropologist Henry de Lumley of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris it’s because they were all killed when a volcano 20 kilometres west of the site erupted, smothering the group with ash. The Roman town of Pompeii was buried in a similar way in AD …